


Oysters, Cheese and Ham

by chainsaw_poet



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Era, Corinthe, Friendship, Gen, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 01:02:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainsaw_poet/pseuds/chainsaw_poet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Bossuet, Joly and Grantaire breakfasted together in the Corinthe, and what remained after the last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oysters, Cheese and Ham

Conventionally speaking, ten o’clock was too early for one’s first drink. But this was not Grantaire’s first drink. Counting from midnight, it was at least his sixth, and from this beginning of this particular session – well, under that method of accounting, Grantaire had no idea of its number and nor would he desire one. What was important was that the glass of wine now in front of him was not his first drink. For that to be true, he would have had to have observed the social nicety of going to bed and waking up again, which had not been the case. 

And even if it had been Grantaire’s first drink, this would not have stopped him from ordering a bottle of wine. Grantaire held as much truck with convention as he did with Conventionists – very little.

The first sip left him wondering whether the wine had corked, or whether a third consecutive night away from his bed had left a bitter taste in his mouth. 

His thoughts were interrupted by voices on the stairs. Strange; the Corinthe was habitually deserted at this time on a Sunday morning – Pere Hucheloup’s _carpes ho gras_ being rather too rich for breakfast. Its quiet was one of the reasons why Grantaire chose it as a place to stave off his hangovers in peace. And not any voices: familiar voices. Discordantly familiar, however, as Grantaire could not remember having heard them in tandem before. The effect was rather like listening to overlapping variations of a well known tune; their tones coalesced at certain moments, plucking strings in his weary memory, and then spiralled away from one another into phrases that he did not recognise.

“I would say that it is unbelievable, but am afraid that would be far from the truth. More than believable, it was probable that events would take this course. I can only beg your forgiveness.”

“Nonsense, there is nothing to forgive. I have plenty to cover breakfast. I am only concerned about your purse. I hope it is back at my rooms, after all.”

“There is very little for you to waste your concern on in that purse of mine.” The first voice again, accompanied by laughter. “But I thank you for it none the less, and for your gracious offer. Although it does rather defeat the purpose of me buying you breakfast to thank you for the loan of your spare mattress last night.”

“A purpose which was spurious at best. The loan of my mattress cost me nothing. In fact, I gained immensely from your company. I have not slept so well in months. I was beginning to think it might augur something fatal, but now I feel quite restored. If anything, I owe you breakfast for returning my appetite to me.”

Emerging from the stairwell: the tip of a cane, and the sleeve of a coat, fashionably tailored but in a fabric far too heavy for the mild September weather. Then, a pair of boots with a sole that squeaked and a trouser leg fraying at the hem. All accompanied by two bright smiles. 

“So, Jolllly-of-the-four- _ailes_ , you have taken wing with the Eagle of Mieux,” Grantaire called, raising his glass to the two men, who grinned in surprise at seeing him in the corner of the otherwise-deserted restaurant. “I know not whether to wish you luck, or to wish you, Lesgles, good health. Both, no doubt, would be a waste of breath.”

“I see you are in high spirits already this morning, Grantaire,” Joly said, dryly. “You know this man, then, Bossuet?”

“As the best scoundrel in Paris.” Bossuet seated himself at Grantaire’s table.

“And the one most likely to buy him wine when his purse is empty, which is often,” Grantaire replied. “And I see that you two know each other well enough not only for breakfast parties, but for nicknames too. I did not even realise you were acquainted. Ah, but let me work this out! You, Joly, are at the medical school and thus dissect bodies as well as the body politic with Combeferre. And you, _L’Aigle_ , take counsel with Courfeyrac – although oftener over dominoes than at the law school. Combeferre and Courfeyrac triangulate with one Enjolras, whom – the Paris gutters murmur – is holding meetings in the back room of the Café Musain on the subject of children’s education, but at which there is more talk of gunpowder than one might ordinarily anticipate. And thus do the threads of fate align to pair a man with a spare mattress with one who needs a bed.”

Bossuet laughed, and Joly gave a round of applause.

“You are correct,” Bossuet said. “We met last week. I had thought I might see you at one of Enjolras’s meetings. You know Bahorel, do you not?”

“Only slightly better than every man in the city knows Bahorel,” Grantaire replied.

“He is attending, and Courfeyrac claims to have stumbled across a poet who keeps a house-plant but also wishes to sow seeds of rebellion amongst the populace. We are becoming quite the motley crew. You ought to join us.”

“Perhaps,” Grantaire said, lifting his glass to take a sip and then, remembering the taste, holding it towards Joly instead. “Tell me if you think this is corked.”

Joly took a sip, and then looked thoughtfully towards the ceiling as he held it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing.

“It tastes fine to me,” he said, handing back the glass. “Perhaps you ought have someone check your tongue.”

“But stay for breakfast first – if that’s all right with you, Joly?” Bossuet said. Joly nodded to indicate that it was. Bossuet responded with a warm smile and patted Joly on the shoulder. “That’s settled then. Mere Hucheloup! Oysters, cheese and ham.”

“And another bottle,” Joly added, waving the half-empty one in the direction of the proprietor’s wife.

Grantaire took another sip of his wine. It tasted rather better than before.

* * *

“You are still here? I thought you would have breakfasted and left by now. It must have been a better night than even I imagined. Come, you must amuse me with your stories.” 

Bousset and Grantaire were sat at the table by the window, both with their heads buried on their arms. Neither stirred at the sound of Joly’s voice. An untouched plate of oysters lay in front of them. 

“There are no stories,” Bossuet managed to mumble into the patched sleeves of his coat.

Joly gave an exaggerated sigh of disappointment, but the corners of his mouth twitched upwards. “No stories? What a shame. I was looking forward to some amusement. You don’t mind if I join you?”

Taking silence for acquiescence, Joly slung his satchel into a corner and used his cane to drag over a chair.

“And you have left me some oysters, too. How kind of you.” Joly prized open a shell and slipped one into his mouth. “Mmm! These are delicious. I can’t think how you managed to resist eating them all at once.”

Bossuet lifted his head just enough to peer at Joly out of one very bloodshot eye. 

“Joly, I love you dearly. But if you do not stop talking about food, I will be forced to use that plate of oysters to silence you.”

Joly merely grinned in response. “Death by oysters is not a fate I had considered. You are quite ingenious, Bossuet - even when your wit is blunted by the pernicious effects of drink.” He helped himself to another oyster. Bossuet groaned and buried his face once more.

“I am forced to agree with _L’Aigle de Meaux_ ,” Grantaire mumbled, not even raising his head. “Thoughts of food set my stomach rolling like the vast Atlantic, and wailing like the Cocytus. It churns like a vortex, and my head spins as though I am set on Ixion’s wheel. It is punishment for the giddy heights we reached last night, for not only Ixion, but all things must revolve. That is why I tell Enjolras that revolution is not progress. Perhaps getting drunk would teach him that when spirits rise they must fall thereafter, and thus you end where you began, or worse off.” He groaned and clutched his side. “But those thoughts give me pain in my spleen to match that in my stomach, and here you come, Joly talking of oysters. I should have known as much - you doctors like to administer emetics. Be gone with you; it is far too early for your gaieties.”

“Too early? Grantaire, it is gone eleven. I have already been to a lecture. Combeferre, doubtless, has attended four at least. And did you not enter this Corinthe because of its motto,” Joly continued. “Carpe Horas! Seize the hour!”

Grantaire now lifted his head and looked daggers at Joly.

“I will seize you in a second,” he said. 

Joly only laughed. 

Bossuet opened one eye again. “Have you only come to tease us, Joly? If this is the case, might you wait until we feel a little stronger?”

“I came to hear your stories,” Joly said, rubbing his nose with his cane. “But you tell me you have none?”

Bossuet and Grantaire shared a meaningful glance.

“No stories,” Bossuet repeated. 

“In that case, I have only one more request,” Joly said. “I find myself strangely short of funds this morning. And you, Bossuet, have just come into some money – or so you told me yesterday. Do you think you might lend me say, five louis?”

Grantaire and Bossuet looked at each other again. The former’s eyes twinkled and the latter groaned.

“You know,” Bossuet cried. “Of course you know.” He paused and looked up a little more fully. “ _How_ do you know?”

“Combeferre,” Joly said, rubbing Bossuet’s shoulder and laughing again. “Via Courfeyrac – who is worse at holding his drink than either of you sorry fellows. Apparently he decided half-way home that the walk to his rooms was too long. So he stumbled back to Combeferre’s, woke up the whole house and then proceeded to be violently ill all over Combeferre’s floor. Combeferre is not happy, I can tell you. Courfeyrac did, however, stay conscious long enough to relate the hilarious tale of you spending a hundred francs on dinner with a girl, and then asking her to pull off your boots.” Joly leaned back in his chair. “Which, I take from your expression, is the absolute truth?”

“More or less, from what I can remember,” Bossuet said. “We were thrown out of a restaurant.”

“Three restaurants,” Grantaire corrected.

“And my windfall has gone the way of all flesh,” Bossuet finished. “I dined like a king, and now my stomach is rebelling like any good populace should in the face of tyranny. And I haven’t a sou to feed myself with tomorrow.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” Joly said, swallowing another oyster. “In fact, you made quite the bargain. With that hundred franc dinner, you have purchased a good enough story that you may dine out on it for months.” 

* * *

“The two of you must be celebrating,” Grantaire said, nodding towards the half-empty bottle of wine on the table in front of Bossuet and Joly.

Joly tilted his head and looked thoughtfully at the wine. “I’m not sure, come to think of it,” he said. “Bossuet, are we celebrating or commiserating?”

“Celebrating, certainly!” Bossuet said, gesturing to Matelote for another glass. “I, for one, have never been happier. Besides, if I got drunk every time fate dealt me a losing hand, I should be no more sober than Grantaire here. Therefore, I drink from joy alone.” 

“For once, I may be more sober than you,” Grantaire said. “A situation that I hope to rectify post-haste, thank you,” he added, snatching the glass from Matelote’s hand and pouring himself some wine. “Perhaps it is because I am sober, and slow, and stupid today, but I fail to understand how Joly came to be confused as to whether you two were drinking to drown sorrows or toast success.”

Joly looked at Bossuet, as though he expected him to answer Grantaire’s question. But Bossuet merely smiled, and gestured for Joly to continue with the story.

“I was at my mistress’s last night so I did not hear until this morning, but Bossuet was struck off the register yesterday,” Joly explained. “By M. Blondeau.”

“Do not say his name, Joly!” Bossuet cried, giving vent to emotion by leaning back in his chair, which would have upset itself had Grantaire not caught it in time. This near miss with gravity was not enough to distract Bossuet from his soaring oratory. “Let not that abomination cross your lips. It is a curse, a blight on society, a name that should remain unuttered by every honest man, and most dishonest ones too. Its very syllables would defile your innocent tongue.”

“Innocent tongue? I think that ship sailed long ago,” Grantaire quipped. “And in the name of all that’s good, do not let Joly be distracted by his tongue.”

Joly responded by pointing the tongue in question at Grantaire. 

“But that is not the full story,” Joly continued. “Bossuet was struck off whilst he was attending class.”

It took Grantaire a moment to process the absurdity of the statement. 

“Well,” he said, standing and raising his glass. “To that, I have no reply but to salute you, M. Lesgles de Meaux. To the only man capable of being struck off for absence whilst in the presence of his professor. I have heard of many lawyers able to make their clients disappear from the scene of a crime, but no lawyer who could absent himself in name, whist remaining corporeally present. When you finally do qualify, you shall be extraordinary.” And with that, Grantaire downed his glass of wine, and sat down heavily in his chair.

“You should not be toasting me, but Guignon. It is all his doing, and I am merely his instrument. And so, to Guignon - a loyal companion who has never yet abandoned me, even when I beg him to do so.” Bossuet raised his glass and drank. “Ah, but it is not all a loss. I happened to stumble across the fellow whose name I saved from the axe of Blondeau’s pen, and he is now lodging with Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac has thus made a new friend, who will perhaps one day be worth the sixty franc fee for the examination that I shall not sit.”

“To friends old and new,” Joly said, perhaps feeling that he, too, should contribute a toast. “But, perhaps Courfeyrac’s new friend – Pontmercy, did you say his name was? Perhaps Pontmercy is not the only good thing to come of this.” Joly fiddled with his wine glass and looked at the table. “A medical degree is four years, but a law degree is only three. Under normal circumstances, you would have finished before I did. However, you will have to stay in Paris another year to complete your courses. So I will be spared the prospect of a lonely final year - you having been dragged back to Meaux by your sister and brother-in-law to become a respectable country solicitor.” 

It might have been either the wine or the excitement, but Bossuet’s cheeks had turned rather pink and his eyes glittered in the morning light. 

“You might have joined me, you know,” Bossuet said. “Once you’d finished your studies, I mean. Like respectable country solicitors, respectable country doctors are much in demand in Meaux.”

“I might even have liked it,” Joly said wistfully. “Although the harsh northern climate would never have suited my constitution. You shall simply have to come with me to Lyon instead. Although they do not go in for respectability quite so much there.”

“All the better,” Bossuet said. “And besides, who said anything about stopping at the _licence_? I might write a thesis. I might fail it the first time. Law degrees can be very long things, all told – Bahorel is proof of that.”

“Is that your plan – to submit a thesis, and become a professor at law, and strike off errant students yourself?” 

The looks that Bossuet and Joly gave Grantaire when he spoke suggested that they had almost forgotten he was present. Truth be told, Grataire rather wished he wasn’t. He felt uncomfortable, like the ghost at the feast – although Bossuet and Joly were, of course, too polite to say any such thing. With no natural place in the conversation and confronted with sincerity, Grantaire resorted to tearing it down.

“For do we not all become that which we despise, the fathers that we vow we shall never resemble? All men revert to type. One need only look at the English poets that Prouvaire so reveres. Shelley dies and is burnt in a blaze of glory. Wordsworth lives to disavow the Revolution and become a conservative rural squire. And you both envision your futures as a return to whence you came, and yet you laugh when I say there is no such thing as progress.”

Grantaire had been ready to continue, when he felt Joly’s hand on his forearm.

“Grantaire,” Joly said, with a smile that no beating heart could resist. “Not today. The sun is shining, the day is young – and so are we.”

“And,” Bossuet added, gesturing nodding towards Gibolette, who was climbing the stairs. “Oysters, cheese and ham are on their way.” 

Grantaire settled from a grumbling sort of sigh. “You exemplify the fault of our age. It thinks with it stomachs. Not revolution but consumption.”

“That’s the spirit,” Joly said, refilling his glass. 

* * *

Grantaire winced as his shoulders hit the back of the chair. Joly was clearly stronger than his slight frame suggested. Perhaps Grantaire ought to invite him to go boxing one of these days.

“Just sit there and for goodness sake don’t say anything else!” Joly snapped, flinging himself into another chair. He leant forwards with his elbows on the table and his forehead on the heels of his palms.

Bossuet stood behind him, kneading Joly’s shoulders, which relaxed slightly at the familiar touch. Bossuet threw a smile to Mere Hucheloup, who was still dressed in mourning for her husband. It rather fitted the mood of the day. She looked rather unnerved by the clatter and crash of their arrival in the Corinthe, and by Joly’s rare display of temper. 

“The usual,” Bossuet said, with a nod. 

“And a large glass of brandy,” Grantaire added.

Joly looked up and frowned at Grantaire. It was an odd expression on him, quite unpractised, and all the more troubling for it.

“Is this your cure for everything?” he snapped. 

“Jolllly…” Bossuet began gently, but Grantaire cut in. 

“It ought to be your cure for everything,” he said. “But instead of reaching for that fortifying spirit, your sort reach for the knife every time, stumbling over themselves to find a vein. Cutting a man whilst he lies unable to defend himself is otherwise considered criminal, but the quacks get away with it, even if their patients get away from them. We Parisians, especially, ought to be more wary of blades – there is only a small difference between a nick and a neck. So, I prescribe brandy and proscribe bleeding. I would always rather drink myself out of a fever, than drain myself of one; better a deluge then a drought, I say. Besides, look where bleeding’s got your beloved France; right back where she started, only with a Charter for a tourniquet – one which suffocates as it stems the flow of blood.”

For once Bossuet’s luck was in, and he was in the perfect position to press Joly back into his seat before he did something to Grantaire that he would have regretted before the day was out.

“Enough, _Grande-R_ ,” Bossuet said, endowing the nickname with almost terrible purpose. “You’ve said more than enough.” 

After having spent nearly four months living in each others’ pockets (such was the frequency of their meetings after the motion of no confidence against the King), and a week of living more at the _Hôtel de Ville_ than in their own rooms (only for it to all end in disappointment), everyone’s nerves were shot and no one’s temper was to be trusted.

Grantaire fell silent.

Apparently satisfied that Joly would stay put, Bossuet relaxed his grip on his friend. He glanced out of the window, and then chuckled bitterly.

Joly looked up. “What is it?”

“There are two Guardsmen pasting up that wretched Charter on the door of the shop opposite,” Bossuet said. “I knew they had short memories but this is ridiculous.” He pointed towards the window, but Joly only shook his head.

“I don’t want to look,” he said. “Damn them all. To do all that we did, and then to see one Bourbon king replaced by another. It’s unbearable.” 

Joly sighed and worried at his bottom lip, the rawness of his anger shifting into something softer and sadder. 

“I can’t shake the sight of Enjolras’s face when Combeferre and Feuilly arrived with the news. I’ve never seen him so… That is, even before…” Joly looked at Grantaire, before dropping his eyes again, and making a harsh sound in the back of his throat. 

Bossuet squeezed his shoulders comfortingly. “Just shock, I’m sure. He’ll be better tomorrow. I think that Enjolras, out of all us, believed that Lafayette could not fail to ensure elections.”

“I still can’t believe that he didn’t,” Joly replied. “I heard Courfeyrac mutter that Lafayette must have done his best – although Prouvaire and Bahorel didn’t think much to that suggestion. I’m sure Courfeyrac is right, and that the man fought for our side, but to fail to even get a national referendum on government....”

“In which the people would have voted for the Duc d’Orléans, giving you the same result – as I told Enjolras before the two of you and Combeferre so rudely ended our debate,” Grantaire said. “All Louis had to do was stumble over your beloved barricades and the people fell at his feet – think what he’d have done with an actual campaign. We’ve simply reached the inevitable conclusion a little quicker. A modern revolution for our modern age.”

“I’m beginning to think we ought to have left you to Enjolras rather than dragging you here,” Joly said. “He’s quite a good shot, you know.”

“I would have chosen swords,” Grantaire said. “One gets closer to one’s opponent that way.”

Joly opened his mouth but said nothing, and Bossuet’s hands twitched again, in case Joly had had another ill advised idea about switching words for blows. But Joly seemed to have lost any heart for arguments and, instead of continuing his verbal sparring with Grantaire, he slumped onto his forearms again.

“I shall have to repeat the year,” he whispered. “Combeferre, too, I suppose. Neither us of have been near the medical school for weeks. I don’t suppose they accept experience gained treating combat wounds in lieu of attendance at practical classes.” 

Bossuet nodded sympathetically and sat down next to Joly, stroking his hand across the nape of Joly’s neck. 

“I’m beginning to see how Bahorel has made his law degree last so long,” Bossuet said. “Nevertheless, our time at the barricades has been a learning experience for me.”

Bossuet’s voice had slipped into the rolling, melodic tone that he used when telling the first part of a joke, or introducing a particularly witty anecdote. Joly raised his head from the table. As his eyes met Bossuet’s, his features eased into their habitual half-smile.

“Oh, yes?”

“Next time, I shall know not to wear my best trousers to the _emeuté_.” Bossuet plucked at their light woollen fabric, which had once been a dark brown but was now scuffed and stained. Even when one disregarded the tear across the left knee, they were in no fit state for polite company and probably had not been for some time.

Joly blinked in disbelief. “Those are your best trousers?”

“Clearly, not any more,” Bossuet deadpanned.

Grantaire watched as a strangled laugh escaped Joly - almost against his wishes, it seemed. It really did appear to be physically impossible for Joly to stay unhappy for long; perhaps a surplus of joy was at the root of his imagined maladies, just as an surfeit of melancholy seemed to cause those of other men. 

“Dear me,” Joly said, turning the laugh into a sigh. “It seems the government is not the only thing in need of reform. Once we have breakfasted, we are going to go home, and I am going to take a bath, and then sleep for a week. And then, Bossuet – if my heart hasn’t given out after the strain of these last few days – I am taking you straight to my tailors and making you a present of some new trousers. After which, I am going to burn those monstrosities.”

“Oh you mustn’t do that,” Bossuet said. “I shall need these old friends for the next time we take to the barricades.”

“Next time?” Grantaire endowed the phrase with as much scorn as he could muster, so that it emerged as a twisted pile of spite, a venomous snake coiled around itself.

“Yes,” Bossuet said. “There is always a next time.” 

Bossuet took Joly’s hand and – to Grantaire’s great surprise – leant across the table and took Grantaire’s hand in his other. Joly met Bossuet’s look with a trembling lip but a steady gaze, but Grantaire, finding himself unable to reach up to Bossuet’s eyes, reached for his brandy glass instead, and drank. 

* * *

“Ah, Grantaire!” 

Joly was standing behind their usual table in his shirtsleeves, which were rolled up to his elbows. His cravat loosened at his neck. His cheeks were pink, but whether that was with the heat of the late-summer morning or excitement at the motley collection of wires and coils and compasses on the table in front of him, it was impossible to tell.

“Your timing is impeccable,” Joly continued. “I am in need of an extra pair of hands, and Bossuet’s are not proving conducive” – Joly paused to laugh at his own pun – “to my experiment. Whenever he connects the wires, the current won’t run.”

Bossuet, who had been trying to attach a wire to a crank with little success, threw up his much-maligned hands in despair.

“I have tried!” he said, collapsing into a chair and picking up a glass of wine. “I have given all I can of myself in your quest for enlightenment. But it is not enough for you.”

“I do not blame you, my dear fellow,” Joly said, patting Bossuet fondly on the arm. “It is your bad luck that is impeding progress.”

“I thought that your science didn’t admit the vagaries of things like bad luck,” Bossuet replied.

“One’s everyday, run-of-the-mill misfortune, maybe.” Joly said. “Your bad luck, however, is so acutely and so absolutely terrible that it ought to be the subject of its own study. I shall write a paper on it and submit it to the _Académie des sciences_.”

“Before I consent to take part in…whatever this is,” Grantaire said. “Might I ask what exactly you’re doing?”

Joly went a little pinker and smiled shyly.

“Oh, it’s quite an old experiment really. I’m not proving anything new,” he stammered. “Courfeyrac said something to Prouvaire about forces of attraction the other day – about things being drawn together at crucial points in history by movements which could not be explained - and then I tried to tell him how it worked with electricity and magnetism. I was describing Ampère’s experiment, and how Ampère used it to refine Coulomb’s theory about attraction and repulsion in magnetic poles and electric charges…”

“Monsieur Coulomb is Joly’s favourite,” Bossuet drawled suggestively, shooting a wicked grin at Grantaire.

Joly turned quite scarlet at this and tried his hardest to look affronted.

“I simply admire his writings, that’s all! The advances he made in the study of magnetism were quite astounding, and his commitment to the revolutionary government…” Joly gave up as his explanation was drowned out by his friends’ laughter. “Oh, hang it! None of you tease Enjolras for venerating Rousseau.”

“Enjolras’s voice does not reach quite so high a pitch when he defends his idols,” Grantaire said. “But come, what would you have me do?”

“Well, Prouvaire was so interested that I promised to show him Ampère’s experiment – and the two of you are going to help me,” Joly said, gesturing to the two circles of wires. “If you, Grantaire, could attach that wire to the terminal of the crank as Bossuet is apparently too ham-fisted to do it.” Joly’s eyes twinkled as he smiled at Bossuet, before turning back to Grantaire. “Yes, perfect. Now, I need you both need to turn the cranks on my command. I would help, but last time I did this, I’m sure it made my arthritis worse – I could barely hold a pen for a week afterwards. Er… where was I? Yes – the cranks. Now, let me just place this compass needle underneath the wire – you see that the needle points north-south, yes? Now, Grantaire, turn that handle anti-clockwise, quite fast.”

After a few moments of Grantaire turning the crank, the needle began to jerk away towards the E engraved in the face of the compass. Joly clapped his hands in glee. 

“Oh, it works – we have a current!”

“Because the needle moved?” Grantaire said.

“Precisely. Electricity and magnetism are connected – which Ampère knew; a man called Ørsted proved it before him. But Ørsted couldn’t prove the relationship between the two – because you see, the needle isn’t attracted to or repelled by the charge. So Ampère did another experiment. And this is where you come in Bossuet.”

With careful and nimble fingers, Joly bent the wires of both circuits so that they stood upright in loops, parallel with one another; two delicate arches which looked to Grantaire like gossamer versions of the ridiculous ostentation that Bonaparte had began building all those years ago at the Place d’Etoile, and would probably never be completed. 

“Now, Grantaire,” Joly said. “You turn your crank clockwise, and Bossuet, yours anti-clockwise – the other anti-clockwise, Bossuet! Very good. Now, in just a second we should see – ah, there it is!”

Under the watchful gaze of three pairs of eyes, the wires edged apart.

“You saw that?” Joly said. “Good. Now – stop turning for a second.” Joly waited a moment and then, having pulled his shirt sleeves down and cautiously tucked his cuffs over his fingertips, teased the wires back to their original position. “Right, this time, you both turn the cranks clockwise.”

“I’m beginning to see why you palmed off this job onto us,” Grantaire grumbled, turning the crank nevertheless.

This time the wires leaned towards each other.

“Parallel currents moving in opposite directions repel, and those moving in the same direction attract,” Joly explained, adopting – perhaps unconsciously – the tone that Combeferre used when trying to convey a particularly tricky point of political philosophy. Any sense of gravitas was lost, however, through the rather excitable arm movements that accompanied Joly’s explanations. “And Ampère used this to prove that running a current through a wire creates a magnetic field around that wire – oh, and lots of other things too, like how to calculate the strength of the field if you know the strength of the current. This quite put pay to poor Coulomb’s idea – God rest his soul – about positively and negatively charged fluids in magnets, and Ampère suggested instead that charges might be made up of molecules.”

“And what, pray tell, is the practical application of all these charges and molecules?” Grantaire asked, ceasing turning the crank and leaning heavily on the table, panting from the exertion.

“Well, some scientists are speculating about using magnets to induce electricity, which might then be used to create motion,” Joly began. “But I am far more interested in the medical applications. We could use electricity to recalibrate the body’s magnetism when it goes awry – which is doubtless the cause of hundreds of otherwise inexplicable complaints. I think that one day we might all think nothing of sleeping in beds enclosed by cages of wire to restore our vitality.”

“I’ll trust in this to restore my vitality, if it’s all the same,” Grantaire said, reaching for Bossuet’s wine glass. “Sometimes, Jolllly, I think you are quite mad.”

Joly grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“And sometimes I think you are quite brilliant.” Bossuet ruffled Joly’s hair tenderly and Joly’s eyes shone.

“Would you mind mentioning that to Combeferre next time he tells me off for forgetting the names of the blood vessels in the leg?” Joly took a sip of his wine, and then handed the glass to Bossuet, who had, quite sensibly, given his own up for lost. “Or even when he arrives today?”

“Combeferre is coming? I thought you said this was for Courfeyrac and Prouvaire,” Grantaire said. 

“One of these cranks belongs to Combeferre, and I think he wants to check that it’s returned in one piece,” Joly explained. “The last thing I borrowed was a thermometer, which Bossuet somehow smashed under a chair leg, nearly giving us both mercury poisoning in the process.”

“Or perhaps the mercury did both of you some good,” Grantaire murmured with a smirk. Bossuet rewarded the joke by giving Grantaire a cuff across the ear.

“Spoken like a man who has had need of it himself,” Bossuet retorted, before adding. “Feuilly is coming too, Jolllly. I saw him late last night whilst you were begging cranks from Combeferre. He seemed rather excited by the prospect of spending his day off observing an experiment. And no doubt Bahorel will, though some inexplicable method of deduction, know that this is where we are congregating and arrive just as the party is beginning.”

“And Enjolras?” Grantaire asked, staring nonchalantly out of the window, which further allowed him to avoid eye contact with either Joly or Bossuet.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Bossuet said, waving over Matelote and Gibelotte, who had just mounted the stairs with heaving plates of ham and cheese.

“Enjolras is actually rather interested in science,” Joly added, seating himself next to Grantaire. “Only the other day, he asked my a question about one of Saint-Simon’s later essays. Perhaps Combeferre has instructed him in the mysteries and beauties of the natural sciences, or perhaps Enjolras feels a particular affinity to physics and chemistry, both of which are concerned with the production of heat and light.”

“The young heathens and atheists throw off the house of God for a scientific experiment in a wine shop. Of all the rebellions of the _ABC_ , this one appeals to me the most – satisfying both my nihilism and my thirst. And yet, you did not think to invite me to your little breakfast party,” Grantaire said. 

“Our other friends do not accuse us of having contracted venereal diseases.” Bossuet reached for a piece of ham, only to have his hand swatted away by Joly, who maintained that they must wait until everyone had arrived.

“The reason we didn’t invite you, Grantaire,” Joly added, refilling the two wine glasses, which were now being shared between the three of them communally. “Is because we rely upon you being here to breakfast with us.”

Grantaire groaned and tossed his head backwards.

“Do I have habits these days? Habits are the death of a man. Once I was a young buck who dabbled in daubing, never frequented the same dance hall or the same dancer twice, who changed his fencing master monthly and who took up a new sport upon mastering the rules of his last hobby. And now I find that I have fallen in with a threadbare lawyer and a hypochondriac medical student! Have I any hope of restoring my own terrible reputation, I shall have to quit your company.”

“But not before we’ve finished the wine, surely,” Bossuet murmured, taking a sip from a glass before handing it to Joly.

“It would be a shame to lose your company, Grantaire. Our breakfasts would be less convivial without you.”

The words slipped from Joly’s mouth as though they were the easiest things in the world to say – and perhaps they were. Perhaps, for Joly, there was nothing simpler than this unabashed statement of feeling: _you are my friend; I enjoy your company_. Joly’s words had no cleverness, no tricky twist to give one a double meaning on which to fall back, should affections be misplaced. But all of eight of them – even Combeferre who was careful with his words, and Bossuet and Courfeyrac who could sharpen phrases like whetstones – had this immense capacity for honesty. Grantaire would watch them as they sat, the eight of them alone, apparently discussing some topic or other but, in actual fact, confessing themselves, until one of them would turn to him and say, as Joly had just done, words which somehow combined to mean: _“And Grantaire, what do you have to say on the subject?”_

Today, at least, he was prevented from replying by the sound a host of voices chattering and laughing in the street below.

“Ah, the others!” Bossuet said, he stood up and crossed to the open window. Cupping his hands around his mouth, and ready to beckon them over, Bousset leant out of the window. 

* * *

The three women returned to the restaurant on the first floor three weeks after the barricades were dismantled.

Madame Hucheloup had expected the bloodstains. She had heard the story about the last of the insurgents being cornered in the first floor of the wine shop whilst she was buying meat and bread for her sister’s household, upon whom she and her servants had imposed whilst the staircases were being mended. She had thrust coins into the hand of the baker, and then ducked into an alley to shed what she thought were the last of her tears. So the dirty brown streaks on the wall and across the floorboards did not surprise her; stains which would never quite come out, however hard the women scrubbed.

But in the tumult of everything that had followed it, she had forgotten the breakfast party given by three of the young men that same morning; the oysters, cheese and ham that the three women had brought to the first floor, followed by copious amounts of wine. Broken shards of glasses and bottles crunched under her feet, as Mere Hucheloup reached down to pick up a fragment of a broken plate, and remembered being addressed in oratorical tones by M. Grantaire, whilst M. Joly tugged at his arm and implored Matelote, through the fog of wine and a head cold, not to give him any more to drink, and M. Bossuet sat in silence at the window, watching them both, his back getting wet in the rain. 

It was all she could do to stop from weeping once more.

“I heard that M. Grantaire gave himself up to die at M. Enjolras’s feet.” Matelote was staring at the blood stains. “But I don’t believe it. He didn’t believe in what the others talked about, and besides, those two never got along. They were like chalk and cheese.”

“I believe it,” said Mere Hucheloup, who had lived for a long time and seen much of how strange the world could be.

A week later, when the Corinthe had not yet reopened because the window on the ground floor was still being mended, Mere Hucheloup caught sight of a young woman through its gaping hole. She was standing on the street, staring into the wine shop. Handsome and well dressed, if not expensively so, she held her head up in a way which suggested she could handle herself, if necessary. But her small, white hands shook as they clutched her skirts, and she gazed into the wine shop not as though she were looking for someone, but as though she saw someone there.

Mere Hucheloup approached the window and said kindly, “Can I help you, my dear?”

The young woman started, and then stared again into the depths of the wine shop, moving her mouth but unable to speak. Mere Hucheloup tried again.

“My dear?”

“No,” the woman said very suddenly. Her voice was too loud for the quiet street and it trembled. “No, I don’t think you can.”

She turned and left as quickly she could, practically running away down the street to get away from the Corinthe. She did not return.

Mere Hucheloup’s next visitors did not come until the spring. To call them visitors was perhaps an overstatement, as they did not even enter the shop. They were simply strolling along the street outside, like hundreds of others; a young couple, still enraptured with each others’ mere presence. They would have escaped Mere Hucheloup’s notice altogether, had it not been for the young man freezing stock-still outside her wine shop, as though he had seen a ghost.

Mere Hucheloup vaguely recognized him. A younger, thinner and paler version of the young man had visited the Corinthe a few times in the company of those she knew better, always dressed in a threadbare coat that fitted him badly and never taking more than a glass of wine. It seemed that this nervous young man had been reborn into another life, with plenty of money and a beautiful wife on his arm. 

His wife – they must have been married, for this girl was no _grisette_ – looked anxious at the sudden change in him, tugging at his shoulder, and asking him questions that Mere Hucheloup could not hear through the glass. The man said nothing, and did not move. After a few moments, his wife removed her glove and pressed her hand against his cheek, as though she were checking that he had not been suddenly taken ill. Her touch seemed to pull him away from the ghosts in the wine shop and back to the living. He smiled wanly at his wife, grasped her hand tightly and pressed it to his lips, before hurrying her away from the Corinthe.

But as they walked away, she looked back over her shoulder, and caught Mere Hucheloup’s eye through the glass.

It was two days later that she returned to the Corinthe, a little before noon when the place was quiet. She had with her an old woman, a servant, whom she told to wait outside.

Young women did not frequent wine shops alone, especially young women in fine dresses, and fashionable bonnets and lace gloves. But this young woman did not seem ill at ease in the dingy rooms, and when her eyes fell upon the wine casks in the corner, an odd familiarity crept into them. 

“Can I help you?” Mere Hucheloup asked, stepping out from the kitchen.

“I hope you can, Madame.” The young woman suddenly seemed uncertain of herself. She rubbed nervously at her wedding ring, suggesting that it had not long been on her hand. “There was, I think, a barricade near this wine shop? In the riots of last June?”

“There was.”

“My husband, he was…” 

The girl hesitated and tripped forwards two more steps towards Mere Hucheloup, before the words came out in a flood.

“He does not talk about them, and I cannot ask, but I know that he was there. And then we walked past here the other day, and I saw what it did to him, and I knew suddenly, that they must have been very good men, these friends of his, the ones who were at the barricades with him. Since then I have thought that I must know their names, even if I know nothing else about them until the day I die. Can you tell me their names?”

Mere Hucheloup nodded, and began to recite the eight names that she would never forget, beginning with the three that she remembered most fondly.

“M. Grantaire, M. Bossuet, M. Joly…”

**Author's Note:**

> Probably not necessary, but just in case anything was confusing:
> 
> 1\. The _licence_ : French universities offered different levels of law degree. This is the one needed to practice as a lawyer. A thesis was necessary to achieve a doctorate and teach at the university. All my information comes from [this useful post](http://corinthe.livejournal.com/19098.html#cutid1) on the subject; many thanks to the author. 
> 
> 2\. In the Brick, it isn't specified that Prouvaire reads English but I couldn't think of French poets that fitted Grantaire's point. Perhaps he reads Shelley and Wordsworth in translation.
> 
> 3\. I invented National Guardsmen posting up the Charter of 1830. It's almost certainly not true.
> 
> 4\. Louis-Philippe was popular amongst the French people, and did indeed visit the barricades at the Hôtel de Ville, although his reception wasn't quite as positive as Grantaire makes out in order to rile the others. Even so, had there been elections, he might well have been the popular choice to rule. The republicans in 1830 did put their faith in the Marquis de Lafayette to fight for their demands, but this attempt failed.
> 
> 5\. I do not know anything else about electricity, magnetism, Ampère, Coulomb or Ørsted than is here. And apologies if the scientific explanations are historically inaccurate. (Thank you, valkyrja for helping me fix my mistakes in this area!) I am terribly sad that Joly missed out on the work of Faraday and Maxwell.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I have a tumblr: http://chainsawpoet.tumblr.com/


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